Mars Rover Photos
Number of APIs: 1
Mars Rover Photos
Image data gathered by NASA's Curiosity, Opportunity, and Spirit rovers on Mars
This API is designed to collect image data gathered by NASA's Curiosity, Opportunity, and Spirit rovers on Mars and make it more easily available to other developers, educators, and citizen scientists. This API is maintained by Chris Cerami. Each rover has its own set of photos stored in the database, which can be queried separately. There are several possible queries that can be made against the API. Photos are organized by the sol (Martian rotation or day) on which they were taken, counting up from the rover's landing date. A photo taken on Curiosity's 1000th Martian sol exploring Mars, for example, will have a sol attribute of 1000. If instead you prefer to search by the Earth date on which a photo was taken, you can do that too.Along with querying by date, results can also be filtered by the camera with which it was taken and responses will be limited to 25 photos per call. Queries that should return more than 25 photos will be split onto several pages, which can be accessed by adding a 'page' param to the query.Each camera has a unique function and perspective, and they are named as follows:
Rover Cameras
Abbreviation | Camera | Curiosity | Opportunity | Spirit |
---|---|---|---|---|
FHAZ | Front Hazard Avoidance Camera | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
RHAZ | Rear Hazard Avoidance Camera | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
MAST | Mast Camera | ✔ | ||
CHEMCAM | Chemistry and Camera Complex | ✔ | ||
MAHLI | Mars Hand Lens Imager | ✔ | ||
MARDI | Mars Descent Imager | ✔ | ||
NAVCAM | Navigation Camera | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
PANCAM | Panoramic Camera | ✔ | ✔ | |
MINITES | Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) | ✔ | ✔ |
Querying by Martian sol
Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|
sol | int | none | sol (ranges from 0 to max found in endpoint) |
camera | string | all | see table above for abbreviations |
page | int | 1 | 25 items per page returned |
api_key | string | DEMO_KEY | api.nasa.gov key for expanded usage |
Example queries
https://api.nasa.gov/mars-photos/api/v1/rovers/curiosity/photos?sol=1000&api_key=DEMO_KEY
https://api.nasa.gov/mars-photos/api/v1/rovers/curiosity/photos?sol=1000&page=2&api_key=DEMO_KEY
Querying by Earth date
Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|
earth_date | YYYY-MM-DD | none | corresponding date on earth for the given sol |
camera | string | all | see table above for abbreviations |
page | int | 1 | 25 items per page returned |
api_key | string | DEMO_KEY | api.nasa.gov key for expanded usage |
Example query
https://api.nasa.gov/mars-photos/api/v1/rovers/curiosity/photos?earth_date=2015-6-3&api_key=DEMO_KEY
Mission Manifest
A mission manifest is available for each Rover at /manifests/rover_name. This manifest will list details of the Rover's mission to help narrow down photo queries to the API. The information in the manifest includes:
Key | Description |
---|---|
name | Name of the Rover |
landing_date | The Rover's landing date on Mars |
launch_date | The Rover's launch date from Earth |
status | The Rover's mission status |
max_sol | The most recent Martian sol from which photos exist |
max_date | The most recent Earth date from which photos exist |
total_photos | Number of photos taken by that Rover |
It also includes a list of objects under the photos
key which are grouped by sol, and each of which contains:
Key | Description |
---|---|
sol | Martian sol of the Rover's mission |
total_photos | Number of photos taken by that Rover on that sol |
cameras | Cameras for which there are photos by that Rover on that sol |
An example entry from a sol at /manifests/Curiosity might look like:
{sol: 0, total_photos: 3702, cameras: [
CHEMCAM
, FHAZ
, MARDI
, RHAZ
]}
This would tell you that this rover, on sol 0, took 3702 photos, and those are from among the CHEMCAM, FHAZ, MARDI, and RHAZ cameras.